Posted
by
timothy
on Saturday August 11, 2012 @05:00PM
from the launch-scrub-til-sÃ¸ndag dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Danish amateur rocket group Copenhagen Suborbitals are readying to test their Launch Escape System for the Tycho Deep Space capsule in the Baltic Sea east of the island Bornholm Sunday 12th August. Live coverage can be found at rocketfriends.org, livestream.com, Wired's Rocket Shop and raketvenner.dk. Live transmissions are expected from 8 am localtime (UTC+2). Live transmissions, audio commentary as well as VHF audio are expected to be available. The Tycho Deep Space is the intended capsule for a later planned suborbital shoot to the edge of Space led by Peter Madsen and Christian von Bengtson."

Meh, that's just a typo. The glaringly terrible grammar of the headline is much worse. I don't know why they're using an Apollo-like capsule in the Baltic sea when a submarine would be better suited for the job, nor why this sea capsule would need a "launch escape system."

I giggle every time I hear about these guys, since they remind me of all that absurdity.

Well, I haven't read the book, but I understand that Gravity's Rainbow is loosely based around development of the V-2 rocket, which was very successful, perhaps not at developing a decisive weapon, but it certainly made a lot of rockets and launched them. I think most rocketry programs since have borrowed elements of the V-2 development strategy or perhaps come up with them independently.

So I don't think it's all that surprising to see a modern development program resemble the V-2 program in some sense,

Buzz Aldrin wrote about a proposed "Apollo II" (read that as "Apollo Two") capsule that was kicked around the office inside of the NASA astronaut corps for a little while. That basic idea is pretty much what Orion has turned into, although the original proposal was to merely expand the Apollo capsule that could still fit on top of an Apollo service module.

The one impressive thing with Copenhagen Suborbital isn't necessarily the cutting edge technology, but rather the incredible low-cost approach they are taking for its development and using largely donations and donated labor to build everything. The comparison is much better made against Armadillo Aerospace, other than the fact they don't have a fairy god-millionaire who is helping them out to sponsor their vehicle development. But they do have Kickstarter and a huge fan base that kind of makes up for that missing part of the picture.

Regardless of anything else you may think about this rocket, they are "bending metal" and sending stuff into the air as well as the fact they already have several launches under their belt to demonstrate at least some level of competence for sending stuff up with this technology. It isn't necessarily what Copenhagen Suborbital has done in terms of being compared to national space programs, but rather that they are doing anything at all and certainly in comparison to other amateur/semi-professional groups working on a shoestring budget they are as far along doing real spaceflight as anybody else in the world.

There are a few retired NASA (and apparently ESA) engineers working in Copenhagen Suborbital as well, so the technical skill of those involved is pretty high and they do know what they are doing.

The one impressive thing with Copenhagen Suborbital isn't necessarily the cutting edge technology, but rather the incredible low-cost approach they are taking for its development and using largely donations and donated labor to build everything. The comparison is much better made against Armadillo Aerospace, other than the fact they don't have a fairy god-millionaire who is helping them out to sponsor their vehicle development. But they do have Kickstarter and a huge fan base that kind of makes up for that missing part of the picture.

It is remarkable how many zeros you get out of those sorts of efficiencies. I work off and on with a similar group doing high altitude balloon research (and the occasional rocket launch). At one point, we did a project (high altitude airship) that was about three orders of magnitude cheaper than a similar DoD project. It was a bit less capable, but it reached considerably higher altitude.

I presume you are talking about Jeff Greason [wikipedia.org] and the Lynx rocketplane [wikipedia.org]? I would dare say they are at about the same level of projects as Copenhagen Suborbital, along with Armadillo Aerospace and if I dare say Richard Branson and Spaceship Two (definitely more money is getting put onto that spacecraft).

There are a number of companies who are preparing vehicles for flight into space at various regimes and price points, but I wouldn't hold any particular group with derision over another. Some have succeeded a